"How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one's name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!"

Wednesday, May 07, 2008

how soon is now?

Back in the late 80s when I lived in Boston, K. and I would come home from another night partying with hipsters, collapse on our separate couches, and listen to the Smiths. This tune with Johnny Mars' hypnotic guitar riffs, was one of our favorites.

How funny that the lyrics appeal to me now as much as they did two decades ago. These returned to me today during the second mile of a particularly cathartic run:

How can you say I go about things the wrong way?I am human and I need to be lovedjust like everybody else does.

I actually started singing out loud for almost an entire lap. It helped. The heart finds healing in strange ways.

Welspoken Nobody

About Me

Amy Lemmon is the author of two poetry collections: Fine Motor (Sow’s Ear Poetry Review Press,
2008) and Saint Nobody (Red Hen Press,
2009). Her work has appeared in Rolling
Stone,New Letters,Prairie Schooner, Verse, Court Green, The
Journal, Barrow Street, and many other magazines and anthologies. She is co-author, with Denise Duhamel, of the poetry chapbooks ABBA: The Poems (Coconut Books, 2010) and Enjoy Hot or Iced: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation (Slapering Hol Press, 2011). Amy
holds a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Cincinnati. She
is Professor of English at the Fashion Institute of Technology and lives
with her two children in Astoria, Queens.